User Interface Design 101, remedial edition

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Dear Avast,

If you are going to repeatedly and incessantly pop up a window asking the user to restart, do not have any key automatically select Yes, require the user to actually take the mouse and click on it.

This is one of the stupidest, most annoying, and hideous designs, for all its ubiquity. I understand that I need to restart; I will do that when I’m damn well ready to do so. I do not need to be reminded. Your restart is not more important than what I am working on.

This design literally insults me. This is my machine, I paid for it. I decide what is best for the machine. If working on something is more important than the security updates, I will delay restarting. That is my choice; this constant popping up is literally telling me that I’m using my own damn computer wrong.

To whomever is responsible: fix it. Right now, it is broken.

2

You have the choice to do the Program Update when you are ready as it is set to Ask, you don’t have to do it when the pop-up notice of an update is displayed, don’t click on the pop-up, let it disappear or use the X to close it.

You can also have it restart later, from the avastUI.

3

DavidR, you misunderstand entirely. I was in the middle of typing something, and the Spacebar, by default, chooses Yes. So here I am, in the middle of working on something, and all of a sudden Avast is restarting my computer. This is poor design of the highest order. I lose quite a large amount of work due to this thing.

The pop-up should come up once. If I say No, that’s on my head and I don’t want to hear about it. Or you could use the far-superior-design of the little taskbar reminder pop-up (no button there to cause it to Restart). But at the very least, make sure that you don’t restart the computer until you are actually sure that is what the user wants to do, as in he grabbed the mouse and clicked on the button. Even that is bad since it’s entirely possible he was trying to click something else in the middle of his screen when the message pops up, but at least the odds are a lot lower.

4

You must have noticed it installing and on completion, it doesn’t reboot automatically it requires interactive input from the pop-up in the middle of the screen. I have always selected restart later and finish what I was doing, usually browsing before closing open windows and restarting.

So I don’t know what happened or why you didn’t see that as it would have to be active if it was going to accept your input, even if that was the space bar, which I agree (if this is the behaviour), should only be the enter key.

5

DavidR, are you intentionally being obtuse? I have said repeatedly that I’m aware it does not reboot automatically, and I never claimed it did. Stop telling me it doesn’t, I know that.

It reboots when you select Yes to the pop-up that continually appears ad nauseam, and to which pressing either Space or Enter selects Yes. And no, it should not be only Enter; any key is wrong. In fact, the pop-up in general is, itself, wrong. I know how to restart my computer, thank you. I can do that myself, you don’t need to give me a button to do so.

There is absolutely no benefit to having that button, only a risk of accidental and unintentional restarting, losing work. Even Microsoft figured this out like a decade ago; nowadays you just get a taskbar bubble in the lower-right corner reminding you. No key affects it, clicking it only brings up the Shut Down screen, rather than going straight to reboot, etc. etc. Apparently Avast’s awful UI designers missed this really obvious and key design point, and thus I have needed to give them some remedial instruction.

6

I completely agree with KRyan. Something like this is unacceptable.

~!Donovan

7

I actually aggree with KRyan here. I haven’t seen this in avast yet but i have in some other program. I was typing like him and confirmed something while typing because i hit the SPACE key right in that moment. And you can count how many spaces were used in this very post which isn’t particularly long…

I’d prefer a popup like the one for Software Updater to ask the user for a reboot instead of a casual middle of the screen one…

8

I honestly think it ought to be possible to never need rebooting at all, but more that likely this would require an OS designed with that in mind and isn’t something Avast (for example) could just decide to do with their own program. Particularly a Windows OS; rebooting is quite a bit rarer in Linux, anyway.

But that’s still no excuse for the pop-up.

9

As Ryan says it is the repeated bombardment of Alerts , which puts off someone , and also it is a shame that it steals focus and an accidental key press could cause enough hardship and irritation.
I suggest a warning sign on the AVAST sys icon if restart was that important.In this modern times even restart is only an essential cleaning operation and a user shall be allowed to choose the time for it.

10

I guess it depends how deep integration goes i think. For example AMD Catalyst drivers can be installed (updated) without a system restart. Antiviruses probably integrate on much deeper level and they don’t allow this kind of stuff.

Still, avast! has moved a lot of functions inside VPS updates, meaning they can update a lot of stuff with casual virus definition updates and without any reboot. But for major program updates they still have to do a full update with reboot (unfortunately).

11

Really, I’m pretty sure all that would require is for someone to restart the program, but then maybe it cannot start up and integrate itself into Windows after boot-up is complete. I don’t know, I’ve never written a program that needed that sort of thing. It’s common enough that I know I’m not going to get anywhere asking about it.

I also think that perhaps Avast’s UI guys don’t understand something: if I am interacting with their UI, it means something is wrong. It means I’ve gotten infected with some virus that Avast let through. That’s the only time I expect to be interacting with their UI, and I am never going to be happy about it. I want to forget Avast is on my computer. Instead, it is very in your face all the time. OK, I realize it’s free and advertising, particularly for the for-pay versions, is part of the deal, but the (overly large, but go away on their own) status update windows that it already has seem sufficient for that. I do not need it popping up, looking for input.

I mention this since something else I’ve remembered about that pop-up is that, if you press No, it opens the Avast interface. A window I literally hope to never see — and if Avast is doing its job properly, I won’t.1 I think the UI team needs to be reminded that they, on some level more than anyone else on the team, needs to be thinking about what the user wants, not what they want. They may want to show off their work, but I don’t care: I don’t want to see it. I don’t care what neat features it has; I want and expect it to just work, and only expect to need to deal with that window when something goes wrong. And this goes back to my original post: Avast’s restart is not more important than what I am working on. Avast needs to be reminded that the best impression it could give users is by being silent, invisible, and effective.

Because honestly, the only time I talk about an A/V program is when someone asks me about it, or it doesn’t work right and I lose work/time/effort/money. And if someone asks me what I use and whether I recommend it, I can give no higher praise than “Yeah, I have XYZ, it never bothers me and I’ve never gotten a virus. Seems pretty solid.” Let’s not forget the history of this industry: antivirus was founded by McAfee and Norton, two programs that have, themselves, been more than reasonably classified as malware in the past. Antivirus programs do not have a good reputation. Invisible, silent, and effective? That’s exactly the kind of behavior that will reverse that impression.

1 yes, I realize that particularly if I’m avoiding a reboot, I’m putting myself at risk of having to interact with it and that would be my fault